Here’s what I learned from this experience, our one big
success—we are the only unit on campus with a negotiated
contract. Our big failure—the livelihood of much of our
casual labor force has been devastated. Management is
highly organized. They were single-minded in their
efforts to control us. They have more money than us and
more power than us, but we outnumber them. In order
to push against forces that have more power than us, we
have to organize each other. We have to all be together,
working consistently in a forward direction over time. We were not organized enough to force management to
offer us a contract without concessions. We cannot let
that happen again. When we look at the world as it is right
now, there is so much we cannot let happen ever again.
We all have so much to stand against, to fight for, to
resist, and to organize to change for good.